John Bailey exhibited widely throughout New Zealand during the 1980s combining installation and sculptural works with supporting works on paper. He then spent 20 years working in the commercial world before returning recently to his full time art practice. This work on paper is a further development of his Corner Series which was exhibited in 1980 at the Peter Webb Galleries. This exhibition 'Wall Drawings' comprised of framed works on paper as well as drawn installations inside the Gallery space which created illusory distortions of the three dimensional space. In Wystan Curnow's words "The other thing was that this image did what the drawings did; it gave the impression of an image which 'masked' or 'hid' the three dimensions of the corner. It made the corner dissolve into its intense charcoal greyness. In looking for that single angle of projection, I was looking to reinforce the fiction of that dissolution, that flattening of the corner, at the same time as I was, by my own movements, canvassing the real space of the gallery. There's a nice irony to that." (Curnow, Art New Zealand 18, Summer 1981)
Jennifer Taylor Moore, Curator of Collections, Sarjeant Gallery for the exhibition 'What It Is Not. Abstract works from the Sarjeant Collection' 15 June - 25 July 2020

The line drawings came after the installation show where the works on paper were more solid planes of colour. The installation image was one of those drawings photographed and then the slide image was projected into the space. I was interested in taking a 2d image and projecting that into a 3 dimensional space...
- John Bailey, 28/5/2020 re this Corner Series work